“Pray tell,” Beniago prompted.

“We come as emissaries of Port Llast.”

Beniago appeared greatly surprised at that. “Port Llast? It is a name I am hearing more often in the last few tendays.”

“And you will hear more of it in the future, I assure you,” said Drizzt. “The populace grows in number and in strength. They are reclaiming their city from the minions of Umberlee, and indeed have brought their city limits to water’s edge once more.”

“It is a rival city to Luskan’s designs.”

“No more,” said Drizzt. “The tides will not favor Port Llast. She will not rise as a trading port, but from her cold waters comes a bountiful harvest of shellfish and other delicacies, and fine rocks from her quarry. There is nothing in Port Llast to threaten Luskan, but plenty of opportunity for one wise enough to see far ahead.”

“That would be Ship Kurth,” Beniago said.

“That would be your choice,” said Drizzt. “And you would have the eyes you once claimed to want. My eyes, Dahlia’s eyes.”

“Why? You don’t seem like the type who would throw in with Ship Kurth, as you made clear in our last encounter.”

“I’m not, but is one crew better than another here in Luskan? I don’t intend to fight for you, nor to provide you anything you might use against undeserving innocents. But I expect that I can stay within my moral boundaries and still be of use to a … businessman.”

“Persuasive,” Beniago admitted. “And so I would be a fool not to take that bargain. I assume that in exchange for this arrangement, Ship Kurth should not accede to any coordinated attacks on Port Llast from Luskan.”

“Correct, and if you change your mind, understand that Port Llast is much better defended, and with far more capable hands, than her small size would indicate.”

Beniago laughed at that unveiled threat.

“Then we are agreed?” Drizzt asked.

“I have to speak with my high captain, but it seems reasonable.”

“And the dagger?” Drizzt asked

“And your life?” Entreri interjected.

“The deal is separate, I think,” said Beniago, “now that I understand that you won’t let your friend attack me. Without me, your tie to Ship Kurth is greatly diminished, of course, and since my associates know that I came out to find you at your request, if I turn up dead or missing they will be more likely to initiate an action against Port Llast, don’t you think?”

“I’m growing bored,” Entreri warned, but Drizzt held up his hand to keep the dangerous man at bay.

“We have prisoners from Luskan who assaulted a caravan bearing refugees to Port Llast,” he told Beniago. “They are unharmed, and are being treated well. We want no war with Luskan. They are from at least three of the other Ships, as well as one man from your own.”

“And you will give them to me,” said Beniago, and Drizzt nodded.

“Their rescue, by you, will buy you good will and capital, I expect.”

Beniago considered it for a few moments, then nodded. “It’s a good start. But I need something else, and you are just the drow to do it. I have a ship of goods sailing for Baldur’s Gate as soon as winter fully breaks—perhaps four tendays. She will be well-armed and manned, a crack crew, but I would have some of my own mercenaries aboard her for extra protection of certain … interests I have on the boat.”

“You ask me to run guard on a merchant ship?” Drizzt asked incredulously.

“She will see no trouble on the seas.”

“Then why—?”

“There are things aboard I would have doubly protected, perhaps from other mercenaries aboard. But again, you will likely find no trouble. None in Luskan would move against Drizzt Do’Urden without more support than they might find on a small boat.”

“Ship Rethnor might disagree with that assessment, particularly if Dahlia accompanies me.”

“There will be no Rethnor agents aboard. I promise that much.”

“My dagger?” asked an impatient Entreri.

“It is a valuable dagger,” said Beniago. “I hate to part with it.”

“You have no choice,” said Entreri, and he started forward.

“Drizzt?” Beniago asked.

“Deal,” said the drow.

Beniago drew out the jeweled dagger, flipped it over, and handed it out hilt first to Entreri.

“Do I ride with you back to Port Llast to retrieve the prisoners?” Beniago asked.

“You haven’t a steed that can pace us,” Drizzt replied. “You, or your emissaries, ride out in two days. Our wagon with the prisoners should meet you on the road about halfway to the city.”

Drizzt glanced at Entreri, who stood holding his jeweled dagger before him, staring at it, his expression filled as much with confusion as relief at having it back in his hand. Drizzt understood that; surely feeling the weight of the jeweled dagger again was evoking in Artemis Entreri a flood of memories, some good, many not so good.

The two were back on the road soon after, riding hard to the south on their untiring mounts. Artemis Entreri didn’t utter a word all the way back to Port Llast.

And Drizzt didn’t press him.

Chapter 10: The Tip of Sea Sprite’s Mast

MINNOW SKIPPER GLIDED OUT OF LUSKAN’S HARBOR, TURNING ABOUT Closeguard Isle to slip out into the strong spring currents. Standing at her prow, holding the guide rope, Drizzt watched the familiar sights drift past, for this was the skyline he had viewed for years and years on end in his younger days. All that was missing was the strange, treelike structure of the Hosttower of the Arcane, with its seemingly organic, spreading limbs.

Drizzt wasn’t pleased with any view of Luskan now, though. He had never been overly fond of the harsh and often lawless place, particularly since the fall of Captain Deudermont, but for several years, he had called this port home. That had all been shattered, of course, but somehow, out here on the water, that most unpleasant memory, Deudermont’s death to Kensidan the Crow of Ship Rethnor, seemed to fade to a distant blur. Drizzt’s thoughts cascaded back beyond those darkest days to the years when he and Catti-brie had sailed with Deudermont aboard Sea Sprite out of this very harbor.

A smile spread on the drow’s face as he remembered the thrill of the chase as Sea Sprite hunted down a pirate. He would stand ready on her deck, scimitars in hand, Catti-brie beside him with Taulmaril the Heartseeker, ready to rake the pirate’s deck and set the stage for Drizzt and Guenhwyvar to lead the boarding charge.

The drow closed his eyes and let the wind and the brine rush about him, slowly turning his head this way and that to catch the thicker scents and better feel the heavier salty gusts. On one such movement, he opened his eyes briefly, enough to see the tip of the mast of an old wreck that had been driven up against the rocks in the south harbor.

Sea Sprite.

It was her mainmast, Drizzt knew, trailing down under the dark waters to the shattered hull of the destroyed ship. That any sizable portion of the schooner remained at all intact in the rough waters around Luskan was a testament to her wondrous design and workmanship, but that hardly comforted Drizzt as he stood at the rail, looking at the lost glory of Captain Deudermont.

And Robillard, he recalled, the crusty ship’s wizard, a mage of considerable power and possessed of a tongue as sharp as his frequent lightning bolts. Robillard long served as Deudermont’s trump card at sea, for no wizard was more adept at splitting the beams of an enemy ship right at the waterline, or at filling sails with wind to speed Sea Sprite along.

Robillard would likely be long dead now, Drizzt knew, and he wondered if the man had left this world in a blaze of fireballs and the hail of ice storms, slicking the deck of a pirate ship. That thought brought a grin back to Drizzt, as he remembered when Robillard had used that very tactic on one pirate vessel in heavy seas. How the pirate archers had pitched and tumbled, and nearly half the crew had slid into the open ocean, making for an easy catch.

He thought of Thrice Lucky then, young Maimun’s ship.

“Young Maimun?” Drizzt whispered aloud, for surely that one, too, was long gone from this world. He had taken up Deudermont’s mantle as the greatest pirate hunter of the Sword Coast, Drizzt had heard, after the fall of Luskan to the five high captains, and for years afterward, Drizzt had often heard the name Thrice Lucky whispered in taverns up and down the Sword Coast, most often in gratitude and with raised mugs from those abiding the law, and accompanied by curses from those who walked a less seemly road.

Drizzt locked his gaze on Sea Sprite’s mast, showing in the low wake clearly whenever the waves rolled past.

He gave a solemn nod to the proud vessel, to the noble crew and captain who had taken her so far for so long. It was a good memory, he decided. Good times with good friends doing good deeds.

And the excitement, always that, with a pirate sail on every horizon, it seemed, and a crew ever ready and eager to take up the chase.

“The finest ship to ever sail the Sword Coast,” Drizzt remarked when Dahlia walked up beside him, to find him still staring at the mast.

“Not any more, it would seem,” she said flippantly.

“Aye, a long tale, and one worth telling,” Drizzt replied. “And no better place to tell it than on a ship’s deck on the open waters, under the stars and with the lull of the ocean nodding truth to every word.”

Dahlia draped her arms around Drizzt and he tensed up for just a moment, then forced himself to relax. Somehow that touch didn’t seem right to him. Not out here. Not on these same waters he had so often sailed with Catti-brie.

“We’ve no private cabin, but we can find a private place,” the elf woman whispered into his ear. “Do you think the ocean will nod about that?”

Drizzt didn’t answer, other than to offer a chuckle, a half-hearted one, and he understood that Dahlia had recognized it as such when she unwrapped her arms and stepped back from him. He turned to her, trying to find some way to soothe that unintentional sting, but he diverted it instead, seeing their three other companions moving to join them.

“I’m not for knowin’ how these bowleggers take to this pitchin’ and rollin’ days on end,” Ambergris grumbled. She planted her feet wide and square, but even then the slightest pitches of Minnow Skipper had her stumbling side-to-side. That just made her dig her heels in harder, but to little positive effect.

“You take the sea’s roll with your belly,” Afafrenfere explained to her, and he tapped his hard abdomen.

“Ah, shut up afore I spray me breakfast all about ye,” said the dwarf.

“You will get used to the motion of the sea,” Drizzt promised. “And when we put in to port, you’ll find your legs unsteady once more.”

That brought a laugh from Afafrenfere, and from the dwarf, but Dahlia just stared at Drizzt, seeming more than a little wounded by his rebuff, and Artemis Entreri looked as dour as ever as he walked past Drizzt to the rail.

“That one’s been sailin’ afore,” Ambergris muttered, shaking her head at Entreri’s smooth gait, for he didn’t miss a stride even when Minnow Skipper pitched unexpectedly under the roll of one heavier wave.